Digital transformation as a new determinant of health

Elena Torrente
 

The Spanish Ministry of Health has recently published the Digital Health Strategy of the National Health System. The document, closely aligned with the WHO and European Union strategy on this matter, presents three main lines of action:

1. Development of digital health services aimed at people, organizations and processes that make up the health protection system, with an equity approach.
2. Generalization to the maximum of the interoperability of health information.
3. Promotion of the analysis of data related to health, its determinants and the health system.

Social agriculture

Josep Vidal-Alaball

In this section, we talked about the benefits for the community and public health of things as diverse as including health in all government policies, having community health agents, implementing telemedicine services, or using neighbourhood pharmacies or drug stores and public markets to carry out social and community actions. On the same topic, I would like to relate another initiative aimed at enhancing the community’s capacities such as agriculture and social farms. Social farming is the practice of participating in family farms as a form of social support service. In return, farmers have the opportunity to increase their income by developing the provision of social services, thereby further exploiting their agricultural skills. Participants can go to the farm one to five days a week. Each social farm is unique and offers its program of activities and opportunities. Similarly, participants confirm the activities they want to participate in.

A Nobel Prize in Economics for health interventions that alleviate extreme poverty

Pedro Rey

The recent 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to three academic economists: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT and Michael Kremer of Harvard "for their experimental approach to alleviating world poverty." His research has revolutionized the way of studying how the economic development of the more than 700 million people living in extreme poverty can be stimulated. It enunciates the prioritization of small interventions in pilot tests and based on the knowledge of why those affected do not make optimal decisions that could contribute to their prosperity. It also forwards a more macro and institutional approach that depends on large programs that "should" work in theory, but in which the cause-effect relationship of its effectiveness has not been empirically established in all cases.

Misappropriation or necessary contribution?

Andreu Segura

If we understand that health is not, as suggested by the Andrija Stampar definition adopted by the WHO in 1946, the mere absence of disease or insanity, but something else, whether it’s well-being as the aforementioned description affirms, it’s a reasonable ability to functional adaptation as René Dubos proposed, it’s easier to understand the importance of the so-called social determinants of health, among which health care is but one more.

These comments don’t imply any disregard for health care, given its ability to ease a good part of the disorders caused by diseases and, sometimes, to cure them definitively. Incidentally, insanity is, according to the dictionary, madness or mental disorder, a distinction that highlights the specificities of psychiatric pathology.

The individualistic short-sightedness of health care

The Global Action Plan for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases of the WHO aims to reduce by 25% the premature mortality due to these pathologies by the year 2025 (strategy 25 x 25) and, therefore, concentrates on strategies that reduce the following 7 risk factors: a) alcohol consumption, b) insufficient physical activity, c) tobacco consumption, d) high blood pressure, e) excessive salt intake, f) diabetes, and g) obesity. Confronted by this individualistic drift of public health, an international group of researchers has published in the Lancet the results of a meta-analysis with 48 cohort studies and 1.7 million individual records, where they have shown that poverty has more explanatory force by itself over the number of years of life lost that many of the factors 25 x 25, in addition to having an undeniable cross-influence by enhancing the aforementioned risk factors. It’s important to clarify that the cohorts selected by the researchers correspond to first world countries, so the analyzed groups of low socio-economic level  represent poverty pockets that are basically concentrated in deprived neighbourhoods of large cities or in certain collectives such as the destitute or the immigrants.

Non-pharmacological prescription, the first choice treatment

Cristina Roure

Regular physical activity, directed exercise, social prescription or cognitive therapies don’t perform miracles, but neither do the medications that are prescribed daily in consultations and instead we accept them as a necessary evil, allocating 1 in 5 euros that is spent on health to pay for medicines that are not always taken, that don’t always produce the expected benefits when they don’t cause more harm than good.

Surprisingly the medical community find it hard to accept the role that non-pharmacological interventions and particularly physical activity should have not only in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, but also to combat frailty in an aging population like ours which moreover, lives submerged in a lifestyle that, after the incessant search for comfort, avoids any effort.

To optimise the expense, the cost must be reduced

Josep Mª Monguet

It’s well known that the budget allocated to health services has endured brutal cumulative reductions over recent years. This is a detrimental fact, but one can not deny the merit of having suffered and then having survived the cut, the professionals - in the first instance and the users alike. It’s sad but praiseworthy.

The health budget is unlikely to improve in the short to medium term because the situation is what it is and by definition the public deficit has a ceiling. Lamenting that resources were not well managed during the "good times" doesn’t change anything. Although it seems a contradiction, the financial management cannot be improved if the health system and its users, collaboratively, are incapable of reducing the avoidable costs that weigh us down. Only thus we can free up resources and allocate them to make the system more efficient.

Sleeping well, a determinant of health

There are some health determinants that we can’t do much about such as those that are marked by our genetic endowment, our family, the place where we have to live and the historical moment that is contemporary to us. Other factors, however, are linked to the lifestyle we decide to lead, such as sleeping well (in quantity and quality) a factor that doesn’t yet occupy a prominent place in the collective imagination. However, many studies aim towards common sense: if one sleeps well, the next day is better, and vice versa. That is why I was not surprised by the finding of a Finnish research that associates sleeping insufficient hours with drowsiness and life quality for adolescents or another collected from Harvard Health Publications that limited sleep to five hours a night for one group of students at the Singapore institute for a week and compared their abilities to another group who had slept for nine hours each night, with predictable results of cognitive impairment due to lack of sleep.

Population’s health beyond service integration

All health systems in the world are immersed in service integration projects aiming to meet the challenge posed by the increased chronic disease and geriatric frailty. Based on this circumstance, King's Fund has published a document, "Population health systems. Going beyond integrated care" wondering how difficult could the integration of public health services be, given that improving health determinants  and risk prevention can most effectively affect the way in which many people grow older and healthier. 

The King's Fund document selects 5 experiences from different countries, that beyond the integration of services, are reaching community action: a) Kaiser Permanente, USA, focused on promoting physical activity and healthy eating; b) Nuka System of Care, Alaska, focused on community work to reduce domestic violence; c) Gesund Kinzigtal, Germany, focused on community groups that promote sport and health; d) Manukau Counties, New Zealand, created programs that emphasize healthy improvements in social housing; and e) Jönköping County Council, Sweden, formed discussion groups to promote health (life cafés, learning cafés, etc.)